OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and a research VP, Barret Zoph, left the company on Wednesday, hours after OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced she would be departing.
CEO Sam Altman revealed the two latest resignations in a post on X Wednesday evening, along with leadership transition plans.
“Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently of each other and amicably,” he said, “but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to now do this all at once, so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership.”
VP of research Mark Chen is being promoted to OpenAI’s new SVP of research and will lead the company’s research org in partnership with Jakub Pachocki as chief scientist, Altman said.
While today’s departures are tough, I’m incredibly excited and honored to lead research at @OpenAI alongside @merettm. I truly believe that OpenAI is the best place to work on AI, and I’ve been through enough ups and downs to know it’s never wise to bet against us.
— Mark Chen (@markchen90) September 26, 2024
Matt Knight, formerly head of security, will be OpenAI’s chief information security officer. And chief product officer Kevin Weil and VP of engineering Srinivas Narayanan will continue to lead OpenAI’s applied team, which is responsible for bringing the company’s tech to both enterprise and consumer customers.
Josh Achiam, a research scientist, will be taking on a new role as head of mission alignment. Altman says he’ll be “working across the company to ensure that we get all pieces and culture right to be in a place to succeed at the mission.”
“Mark, Jakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt, and Josh will report to me,” Altman added. “I have over the past year or so spent most of my time on the non-technical parts of our organization; I am now looking forward to spending most of my time on the technical and product parts of the company.”
In his post, Altman tried to assure staff — and those on the outside looking in — that the leadership changes were simply the normal course of business.
“Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding,” he said. “I obviously won’t pretend it’s natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there is never a good time, anything not abrupt would have leaked, and she wanted to do this while OpenAI was in an upswing) make sense.”
McGrew said simply that it was “time for [him] to take a break.”
“The last eight years of OpenAI has been a humbling and awe-inspiring journey,” he added in his own post on X. “The small nonprofit I joined in January 2017 has become the most important research and deployment company in the world … I have great confidence in [OpenAI’s] leadership.”
McGrew joined OpenAI as a member of the technical staff in 2017 and was promoted to VP of research in 2018 before assuming the role of chief research officer.
Zoph — who joined OpenAI in 2022 — said in a separate post that it “[felt] like a natural point” for him to “explore new opportunities outside of OpenAI.”
Zoph led the post-training team, which trains and improves OpenAI’s models before they’re deployed into products like ChatGPT and OpenAI’s API and to other internal OpenAI research teams.
“This is a personal decision based on how I want to evolve the next phase of my career,” he continued.
OpenAI’s departing execs may say publicly that the splits were amicable. But they come on the heels of reports that OpenAI is plotting a transition from a nonprofit-governed company to a for-profit entity, with Altman set to receive a 7% equity stake.
Against the backdrop of a reported new funding round valuing OpenAI at $150 billion, disagreements over the company’s direction may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
We’ll surely find out more on Thursday, when OpenAI is scheduled to have an all-hands meeting.
McGrew, Zoph, and Murati are the latest high-level execs to depart OpenAI in recent months. Prominent research scientist Andrej Karpathy left OpenAI in February; months later, OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever quit, along with ex-safety leader Jan Leike. In August, co-founder John Schulman said he would leave OpenAI. And Greg Brockman, the company’s president, is on sabbatical.
Of the 13 people who helped found OpenAI in 2015, only three remain.
“Being a leader at OpenAI is all-consuming,” Altman said in his post. “On one hand it’s a privilege to … be the fastest-growing company that gets to put our advanced research in the hands of hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand it’s relentless to lead a team through it — and they have gone above and beyond the call of duty for the company.”
OpenAI’s press office didn’t respond when asked about the latest departures.